"Herd Immunity"

A bit of a two-step shuffle off to the side and then back again with particular panel. The concept stayed pretty consistent, but the end result as far as placement in the newspaper changed, and since context means everything, that in turn slightly effected the intent. Or would have. Maybe.

Speaking of context, the inspiration was borne out of a sense of dull rage at the neverending COVID-19 cases here in Alaska which continue to spiral out of control. It's worse than it's ever been, hospitals are maxed out and everybody's got crisis fatigue and so is dropping their guard. The complete failure and abject lack of morality and ethical principles on the part of the state and local administration to exhibit any leadership with regards to public health mandates is astonishing.

While this is to be expected as standard operating procedure when it comes to Republican incompetence, it's especially disappointing with the University response, specifically not adopting mandatory vaccination as a prerequisite for attendance to face-to-face classes on campus. We're supposed to represent the best + brightest, or at informed but it appears the fuck-it-all for free-dumb "let 'em die" approach has been adopted. And the lack of empathy and intelligence on the part of the general populace isn't all that surprising, at least not if you drive anywhere in traffic.

So anyways, rant aside, I was pleasantly surprised at the page coverage of the panel - looked absolutely great (a third of the page, just like old-school journalism editorials from days of yore). I was also reminded of a pro-tip about never sending any files to an editor that isn't the absolute final print version. This one as it appeared was actually the low-res proposed version sans the "Nuggets" banner... which one can see in the paper as the faint "Nuggets" header is visible and the copyright info + tagline for the Instagram site was missing. Amazing quality for a 72dpi image file though, as opposed to the normal 300dpi print file that was sent after approval. Thing is, most editors have waaay too much to deal with to remember every little detail about every damn issue at hand (literally speaking), so the less they have to deal with petty diva stuff from all their freelancers the better. Come to think of it, this MO fits equally well with many a haggard educator...